What does it mean to walk the dreams of dragons?

Days to read it: I read half the book at the bookstore before I couldn’t resist anymore and had to buy it. After that, I read it in two days.

Synopsis: Cat could always see, hear and smell down the threads of magic that make up the spirit world, the fabric of life that sustains the physical world around her. Living under the care of her Aunt and Uncle and cousins of the Hassi Barahal clan, she remembers clearly, her mother saying one thing to her before she died: Don’t tell anyone what you can do or see, Cat. Tell no one. Not ever. Except for her best friend and cousin Bee, Cat never had more than a lingering curiosity about her ability. It certainly came in handy when curiosity gets her and Bee into and out of trouble at the Academy. Countless times, her ability to melt into her surroundings and disappear from the awareness of those around her, creeping like the shadow of a silent cat, has saved her and Bee from many a potentially troublesome situation. So too, has her skill led her to stumble upon intriguing tidbits of information that would never have come her way otherwise. For example, why was there such little information about her father? What is behind all the current restlessness in the city streets? Who was the mysterious visitor who demanded information about airship designs from the headmaster at the Academy? Just when she thinks she’s about to figure out some answers to these questions, a Magister from the Four Moons House barges into her home and the chill winds of his cold magic sweep around the tide of her life, changing everything she has ever known or believed to be true about herself and the world she knew. In Kate Elliott’s words, Cat’s world is one rich in a fantastic history and culture, a “mash-up” of ideas invented and real – an “Afro-Celtic post-Roman icepunk Regency novel with airships, Phoenician spies, and the intelligent descendents of troödons”. The best kind of stuff.

Impressions: As you can probably tell from the fact that I read half the novel at the bookstore, I was gripped from page one. I tried exceptionally hard to resist buying the book for the longest time, but, alas, I am not a masochist and therefore could not hold myself back from buying it in the end (in case you’re wondering why I didn’t want to buy it – I’ve lately come to the conclusion that I’ve been spoiling myself by buying more books then I can read and, as a consequence, have been trying to wean myself off of this compulsive addiction to book-buying.). I love the world Kate Elliott has created for us and I love her characters, each and every one. I haven’t been so excited about a world since the Old Kingdom Trilogy. She’s got me trapped in her world and I don’t want to be let out!

Okay, I will stop gushing and start describing. From what I’ve read, two worlds exist superimposed one on the other in Cat’s world: the spirit world and the physical world. Both worlds are interlinked, especially by magic workers. Most people, including magic workers like the Magisters of the Great Houses can channel magic from the spirit world but cannot see or walk in it. Cat, on the other hand, can, and she finds it both a refuge and a mysterious place that she cannot even being to understand, peopled by spirits who can protect or endanger. In the real world, there are some interesting tensions as well between those who can wield magic and those who thrive on technological advances. Cat’s time is similar to the time of the industrial revolution, and new technologies such as airships are threatening the old traditions and hierarchical systems mages demand from non-magical folk.

What I really thrill at is how Kate Elliott mixes in a deep sense of old culture – similar to the feelings you would get when reading myths or folktales – and clashes it with scientific concepts like the principle of Ideal Gases, and combustion, all seamlessly mixed together so it doesn’t feel gimmicky but real. Everything from ghouls rising to the surface from mines dug too deep, to trolls knowledgeable in scientific craftsmanship exist in this world. There are villages deeply rooted in old traditions, where warriors risk their spirits to hunt in the spirit world and bring protection and blessings on their villages for the year. There are ancient bonds between servants and masters of the Great Houses, chains forged from the spirit world that cannot be broken until death. There is a rich history of the different peoples who migrated and intermarried and created civilizations that have risen and fallen and carved out the landscape and current situations that Cat lives in. And, running deep beneath it all is the Wild Hunt. In other words, Kate Elliott amazes me with how realistically complex she made her world.

The characters are fairly complicated themselves. Cat thought she knew where she stood in the world, but one incident precipitates her realization that she might have been living based on lies all this time. She’s a very sympathetic and admirable character. I’m tired of reading novels where the heroine never cries and acts like she already knows she’s the heroine, and yay for strong, beautiful female leads with perfect flaws who like swords and horseback-riding and pushing good-looking men around blah blah blah. I sometimes get this feeling that what it means to be a heroine is getting confused with these ego-tripping characters that are just… I don’t know how to say it but so obviously tailored based on standard characteristics that are likeable (here I go, on my rant). But, here we have a more realistic character, who cries and feels lost and betrayed, but musters up inner strength from the few truths that she does know in order to fight her way out of ridiculously tight situations. Cat knows how to ride horses and use swords and she does her own bit of shoving good-looking men around, however, she admits that she’s scared most of the time and worried that this fight might be her last one, but pulls herself together and does it anyway and in the process realizes just how strong she is just the way she is, confusing heritage and all.

Each character has a surprising past that adds to the main storyline and explains why they are the way they are, but the focus remains on Cat’s development, which is how I like it best. The pacing of the novel varies to keep things fresh, but is mostly quite fast-paced with ample action and beautiful descriptions and Cat’s personal revelations.

As with such complex worlds, there were times when I thought, “Wow, massive infodump… can’t retain…must read this part again… and again…” because there are just so many different peoples and cultures that exist in Cat’s world. I still don’t think I’ve got a complete grasp of all the information provided in this first book of a trilogy. But, for the first reading, I’m usually content just riding the wave and seeing the sights along the way, choosing to remember them or forget them until later. Cat’s story alone was enough to keep me entertained through the whole book.

Fiery Shemesh, the conclusion of the story is such a cliff-hanger! Is it impossible for me to read slowly and soak things in more? Jeez. I am the cause of my own reading woes.

Excerpt:

In the flecked depths of the huge first-floor-landing mirror, I studied him. His height, his dark brown complexion and symmetrical features, his hands and that part of his throat revealed above the embroidered collar of his jacket: all matched in the mirror the way he looked on the landing. His magic was hard for me to see, although faint tendrils snaked out from him. Either he was so powerful that magic exhaled from him, as misty breath is expelled from the lips on a winter day, or he was actually using his magic to search the house, as if he sought to uncover our secrets. How could he just march into this house as if he owned it? I wanted to claw that disdainful expression off his face. But I did not. Because he looked into the mirror and saw I was watching him.

“What do you see in there?” he demanded.

“Your boots are scuffed.”

Men who stand in that arrogant way with their backs straight, their shoulders tight, and their chin lifted the better to sneer at those lower than them can be neither comfortable nor happy. But that doesn’t mean they know it. His gaze flicked down to his polished, perfect books, then up again.

He said, “You have no idea of the privilege and honor being shown to you this day. You are ill prepared and ill mannered and ill suited. But a contract is a contract, sealed, bound, final. I will do my duty, and you will do yours.”

…

He rapped his cane on the floor three times. An echo resounded, the house throwing the spell back at him, but it wasn’t any use. We heard a tramping and stamping before the door burst open and slammed against the wall.

“Gracious Melqart protect us!” Evved croaked from below.

Up they thumped as my heart galloped until I became dizzy with dread. And just as quickly I was crackling with indignation, for he had summoned his coachman and his footman to be his witnesses. The coachman was a burly fellow with white skin and spiky white hair, and the footman, who rode in the back and opened the door for his master, was a perfectly ordinary man of Afric origins.

Then I looked in the mirror, and all my indignation vanished, even my dread. I was simply too stunned to feel anything.

There stood the coachman, exactly the same. But the footman was not a man at all, not when you could see what I could see in the mirror. He was a woman, first of all, so tall and broad-shouldered and powerfully built that a glamour disguising her as a man would be easy to bind. In the mirror, she was limned by a phosphorescent glow, bright orange and flaring blue, and she had a third eye, a mystic eye of light in the center of her forehead, that allowed her to see from this world into the spirit world.

…

With a wordless shout, he flung the ball of thread into the mirror while holding on to one end. With a sound like a latch opening, the uncoiling thread penetrated the mirror and at once could be seen as glittering links in an unrolling chain. As it rolled, I began to see the shadows of another landscape, the hills and forests and rivers of the spirit world. All our weak images faded to nothing as the mirror turned smoky with power as he chanted words in a language I did not know. Ghostlike sparks spinning off the eru could still be distinguished, but even these sparks were blurred as the chain of binding was fixed and the mirror became opaque.

…

“Dua! Dua! Dua!” The old man tugged on the thread, and suddenly there was a click like a door closing. A ball of perfectly ordinary yarn rested in his hand, and the mirror reflected nothing but the landing and the people standing there in various stages of impatience, grief, boredom, and shock. All the magic woven into the mirror had been sapped out of it by the grip of the spell, so even the eru appeared as a perfectly ordinary man with black skin, black hair tied back in a dense horse tail, and the distracted smile of a person whose thoughts wander elsewhere.

Or maybe I had dreamed that vision in the mirror. Maybe I hadn’t seen an eru at all. Maybe Bee was right, and I was seeing only what I wished were true because it was easier that way than accepting what I didn’t want and could not understand: that the world was cruel and had ripped my parents from me just because it happened that way sometimes.

The personage rapped his cane twice on the floor. The house seemed to groan, and there came a shout from upstairs, like a girl waking from a nightmare.

“Now, Catherine, Four Moons House has taken possession of you,” said the personage to me.

Random fact I learned: You must give the djeliw something in exchange for their help, lest they ridicule you.

Rating: 5 saber-tooth tiger half-siblings that you never knew you had

Other information: Check out Kate Elliott’s website and livejournal (Her real name is Alis Rasmussen)

-Here is an interview where she talks about her other novels and how she writes

Li – You know, I don’t think I’ve ever read Georgette Heyer. Were there movie adaptations based on her books, though? I might have seen a few of those. And yes, if you like a smart romance fantasy in a great world, you should pick this up! Or, at least, next time you’re in a bookstore, try reading the first chapter (hehe)…

Huh. Unusual real name. I love it. She should have written under that one! I’ve thought about reading Kate Elliott before but her books sound a little more high fantasy than I tend to enjoy — my brain does not do well with lots of clan/mythology/industry things to remember. It is much happier trying to remember the intricacies of made-up politics.

It sounds kinda heavy reading for fantasy. I love the excerpts you shared, but not sure if I’m ready to plunge into a book like that right now! Sometimes the complex world-building befuddles me. Although the fact that you read it in three days is very encouraging!

Jenny – I like her real name, too. I like how her name is Alis – like Alice but spelt differently or like Elize, maybe? Um, I would say her books do have a lot of worldbuilding in them, but I would also say that there is a whole lot of good storytelling that doesn’t necessarily rely on you having to remember everything she tells you. There is a lot of human drama and character growth. I haven’t really had my heart beat so quickly for a long time while reading a book 🙂Jeane Haha, for sure, too much worldbuilding turns me away, too! I’m ashamed to say I haven’t even read LOTR because I was so intimidated by all that world building. I prefer character driven books, and I would say that this book is definitely character driven as well. As I was just saying to Jenny, there were so many points in the book where my heart was literally in my throat! Try reading the first chapter and see if you like it. That’s what I did and I ended up almost finishing the entire thing in the store. 😛

This sounds like a great (if a bit complex) book. I love it when writers take fantasy seriously and build a whole world instead of throwing in a wizard or vampire here and there to call the story a fantasy. I’ll keep this one on my list of possible reads!

Allegra – : Yes, you can really see that Kate Elliott greatly enjoyed creating this world! It’s one of those worlds where I really really wish I could visit (Just like Garth Nix’s world of the Old Kingdom…I want to go there despite all the undead creatures!). I don’t think it’s too complex, I just think I got really excited wanting to read and finish this book that I may have read some parts a bit faster then I should have. It’s one of the many problems I have when reading a book that’s really enjoyable!

Ladybug – (I love your user name :P) I’ve been in a bit of a dry spell recently, but this book mixes everything I like about fantasy and spins it out into a great story: romance, adventure, a world that feels real and believable and great characters, all of which I love. When I read the first chapter of this book, I already had a great feeling from it, so I kept on reading. I’m glad I did! Thanks for dropping by 🙂

darla – I’ve never read any of her other books! But, I am definitely interested now that I’ve enjoyed this one so much. Have you read any of her other series? Do you have any suggestions which one I should start on next? (since the next book of this Spiritwalker trilogy isn’t due out anytime soon…what am I to do?!) 😛